USPS, UPS, FedEx see Sonoma County business surge during holidays

On an average day at her UPS Store on Fulton Place in Santa Rosa, manager Connie Muniz sees about 60 customers, she said. This Monday, by noon, she’d already helped 80.

And over the lunch hour, during one 15-minute period, the line reached out the door.

“I’m sorry I can’t talk,” Muniz said. “It’s just crazy in here!”

She’s not the only shipping store manager to feel that way.

Dec. 14, just 10 days before Christmas Eve, is widely regarded in the shipping industry as the busiest day of the year.

Judy Warren, who acts as a manager for the Sebastopol post office, has been working for the Postal Service for ?20 years. She said that on an average day, she’ll get between 100 to 125 customers. But during the holiday season, that number skyrockets.

On Mondays during the holiday season, “you’ll see twice that,” she said. “It gets a little hectic.”

The USPS expects to deliver 15.5 billion pieces of holiday mail this year and of that number, 600 million are packages, according to USPS spokeswoman Sarah Ninivaggi. It marks an increase of ?10.5 percent from 2014’s holiday season, measured from Thanksgiving to Christmas. United Parcel Service and FedEx are seeing the same trend.

FedEx expects to see an increase of ?12.4 percent, with up to 317 million packages being shipped this holiday season, a FedEx news release stated.

UPS’s numbers are similar. Its projection of 630 million packages also shows an increase of “more than 10 percent,” according to UPS spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg.

Shipping companies attribute the significant increase to people turning more and more to online shopping. UPS is hiring 95,000 temporary workers to help fill demand. FedEx, too, is hiring. It has hired an estimated 55,000 temporary employees, according to a press release.

The Postal Service is bringing on an extra 30,000, Ninivaggi said.

Customers in line at the Santa Rosa UPS Store and at the Sebastopol post office didn’t seem too concerned about waiting, or about whether their packages would arrive on time.

John Wanamaker was at the UPS Store sending gifts of wine off to Oklahoma and North Carolina. Karen Rocha was dropping off her Christmas cards.

Al Velmere was there, too, with Christmas cards going to his grandkids in Colorado. Joe Reiter was shipping a present to his fishing buddy in far Northern California.

All waited patiently, standing beneath a sign that displayed, in festival holiday colors, the deadlines to ship packages for Christmas Eve Delivery:

UPS 3 Day: Dec. 18

UPS 2nd Day Air: Dec. 21 or 22, depending.

UPS Next Day: Dec. 23

There’s a similar but less prominent posting at the Sebastopol post office, highlighted in pink and green. It’s there more to help tellers advise customers on when to ship for Christmas Eve delivery.

Standard Post: Dec. 15

First Class Mail: Dec. 19

Global Express Guaranteed: Dec. 19

Priority Mail: Dec. 21

Priority Mail Express: Dec. 23